Monday, March 18, 2024

‘Scandal’ Takes Left Turn Into Ferguson; Olivia’s Black Card Challenged (Watch)

scandal lawn chair

*Very rarely does “Scandal” deal with race as it did in last night’s episode – not since Papa Pope yelled at his daughter Olivia, “You have to be twice as good as them to get half of what they have!”

In a departure for the show, and on the heels of this week’s DOJ report outlining the racism in Ferguson’s police department, municipal court and jail, Shonda Rhimes and her team of scribes dove into the politics of Ferguson through the fatal shooting of a black teen by a white cop. The officer claimed he pulled a knife, but it turned out to be a receipt for the new cell phone box he was carrying.

The episode had Courtney B. Vance as the boy’s angry, shotgun-wielding father, refusing to leave his son’s dead body until the police came clean. Protesters were gathering with signs, a local activist was taking charge and Vance sat in a lawn chair over his dead son in the middle of the street, awaiting his full explanation from the cops.

Olivia Pope was hired to diffuse the situation for the DCPD, which led the local activist to challenge her “black card” as well as her support of the community while working for a white Republican president. Watch this scene below:

As the hour progressed, Liv was slowly swayed toward the side of the protestors, literally crossing the barricade at one point to stand and shout with them.

“The fact that they stand in groups and say things you do not like does not make them a mob,” Olivia told the police chief. “It makes them Americans.”

We find out the cop had already arrested his suspect – a white man – who was carrying the knife that the officer planted on the black teen to justify the fatal shooting. …And the episode didn’t end without that white cop delivering a show-halting speech about the difficulties and frustration of policing “these people.”

According to E! Rhimes herself admitted that she and her writing team struggled with how to end the story. Do you mirror reality, and let the cop walk, or show for once that justice can be served?

“We had a great deal of debate about this ending,” Shonda tweeted. “Whether to be hopeful or not. It was really hard…In the end we went with showing what fulfilling the dream SHOULD mean. The idea of possibility and the despair we feel now.”

As the episode closed, the teen’s father was escorted by Olivia to President Fitzgerald’s Oval Office, where Fitz (who also has lost a son) tells the grieving father “I’m sorry for your loss.”

The episode’s final image is of the slain boy, Brandon – his face being seen for the first time as he is zipped into a body bag.

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